Once when I was flying from Minneapolis to Houston, the captain announced that we were going to arrive some thirty minutes early because of a tailwind. He said, “We’re going as fast as this plane is supposed to go” and all I could think of was, “What if he's wrong and we’ll rip apart?”

The obvious answer was that the plane had been tested at that speed. It wasn’t good enough to have engineers figure it out on paper. A test pilot had flown it at different speeds and conditions to see if it persevered.

The Bible says that Christians are tested as well. It’s not enough to say we are Christians in theory. We’re tested in different altitudes and under different conditions as we fly in the storms of life. These tests of faith develop the perseverance we need so that we can be what God designed us to be.